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I live for my hobbies, my work enables me to afford and further them. Some people live to work, well I work to live. I don't know how people without hobbies get through life. I need things to explore and learn from, to enjoy and excel at. Hobbies can become passions!
Here's some of mine:
Mountains: I love to mountain climb, day hike, backpack, and camp in the mountains. This is by far my favorite hobby, and not a day goes by that I don't dream up the next adventure in the local mountains. I'm awed by their beauty and grand scale. I've even moved away from where my job is based, across the country, to be able to live next to the mountains I so love. I now make a cross country commute twice a week to work by airline, and I'm now looking for a new job as I'm not willing to move now that I've found my slice of heaven!
Photography: I photograph everything, and nearly always have my camera with me. Mostly, I photograph the outdoors and scenery. I'd love to turn this into my income somehow. One of my favorite things to do is backpack into an area, spend the night, spend the entire next day taking hundreds of photos of the area, spend the night again, then pack out. I plan trips around areas I want to photograph.
Video games: I never grew out of them, and still to this day enjoy them. However, I don't have much spare time for this anymore as I'm rarely sitting at home on a day off. But if I had more, I'd like to game more. I love to lose myself in a game world where I don't think twice about the worries of life.
Carnivorous Plants: I have an extensive collection of all kinds of unique carnivorous plants (CP's), from all over the world. I have a bunch of temperate CP's outside in 'mini-bogs' that need season changes: American Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia), sundews, Venus Fly Traps over a dozen varieties and several dozen of these plants alone. All of these are beautiful, colorful, and quite unique, and surprisingly easy to care for. And they do catch bugs like mad. The Pitcher Plants are especially adapt at it, and at any one time, I can be sitting on the patio and there will be several wasps or flies in the process of being lured to their death. In addition, I have a large indoor terrarium in which I grow tropical Nepenthes, the royalty of CP's. They have specific temperature, light, and humidity requirements that the terrarium allows me to control. I have several dozen of these plants, each a different variety. Fascinating, exotic, and beautiful - look up the term Nepenthes to see what they are. I also have an extensive orchid collection.
Aviation: I started flying for fun as a hobby, and liked it so much it eventually became my profession. This is a strange one: I still love to fly and enjoy the topic of aviation, but I HATE my profession and regret doing it for a living. I should have kept it as a hobby as the job is sucking all the enjoyment out of it and I've become miserable at work. I love airshows, love to watch planes fly, love to fly for fun, but HATE flying for the airlines and dread going to work. I'm trying to find a new career and it is my #1 priority right now. But I'll always have flying in my blood.
Skiing/snowshoeing. I guess this could tie in with my love of mountains. I don't let winter stop me from enjoying them, and I snowshoe through the backcountry as well as ski in the backcountry (not to be confused with cross-country or nordic skiing), and occasionally will pony up the $ to downhill ski at a formal resort. All of it is thrilling in its own way.
Also, I've found I like to spend time surfing various internet forums such as this. I'm on all sorts of diff't forums: Aviation industry forums, carniverous plant forums, mountain climbing and photography forums, video game forums, and general forums such as this. I've found them a great way to glean new information and share my information with others.
Software development (yes, for fun )
Playing with my parrot (not often enough, if you were to ask him)
Astronomy
Geocaching / Hiking
Coin collecting (inactive in that lately)
Poker (you could call that "coin collecting" too)
City-Data forums!
Anything out doors! From hiking to just having my morning coffee outside. I love to work out at my gym, read, really enjoy cooking (oh and eating) and entertaining....I also make really outragously cute hairbows/headbands for little girls...
hard to have time to do it all but
I love to workout, love lifting
too hot here in summer but love to be outside
hiking
biking
riding my motorcycle
love to read, informational things, anything animal!
take care of my girls- kitties and my bearded dragon.
Over the years I have enjoyed many hobbies, but have given some of them up since I am older, and unable to do them anymore.
I love to write.
I was enjoying successes in three of my other hobbie, then after people kept asking me how I was successful in them. I wrote some how to books on those subjects, and
I actually turned the books on those three of my hobbies into a new publishing company business.
I have a hacker who changes my spelling and formatting, so it is difficult to get my works printed before they make changes to what I typed. I did manage to get thee books published before they did too much damage. Although they did duplicate two words in my subtitles of my first edition of my third book. They did that after I had done three edits, in between that time, and the time I sent it to my printer they managed to slip in the duplicated words. I explain that to my customers and thank GOODNESS they have understood.
The three hobbies on which I published three how to books were on:
Couponing and Rebating, (plus, I added a chapter in that one on How Not to Be Riped Off by Mail Order, plus, How to Effectively Complain, in that book) ,
Winning Sweepstakes, and
Winning Slots Jackpots.
I also enjoy landscaping our yard.
I used to like to plant, but have become disabled to a point of not beng able to do the actual planting myself anymore.
I have also enjoyed designing original furniture, that my husband asnd I built ourselves when we were younger.
I designed an original design for our patio. Becasue it was an original design, when an appriaser appraised our home he asked me: "Do youI know how much of the cost of a patio will increase the value of your home?"
I told him:" I've read that you can only recover 15% of your cost of a patio."
He told me: "It is correct that normally you can only recover 15%, then he asked me if I had my receipts, and asked if I could show them to him?"
I did have my recepts, and after I showed them to him he told me:" Usually you can only recover 15% of your costs to the value of your home, but since this is such a prety "original:" design, I am going to allow an increase in the market value of your home by 250% of your patio costs."
If any of you are planning to install a patio, instead of using a plain circle or oblong shape, design an original shape and you too could improve the market value of your home too.
Mine stated out to be an oblong shape, but I inserted a long scolloped flower bed tot eh long back side of it. I cut out four other flower beds in various shapes. I inlaid some treated 2x4's to give an optical illusion of a walkway entering into the patio area from our carport, then I designed a small octigon shape and ran the fake walkway run into the middle of that, at which point I angelled it to have the fake walkway to extend to the center of a larger ( not qite) octigon shape. I say not quite, becuse as you know a true octigon has eight equal sides , but mine only has six equal sides and two shorter ones. Then, from the center the fake walkway extends in a straight line out to the end of patio. I did it this way to give our narrow back yard soem opticaL illusions tht actually does make it appear larger thatn it really is.
I also used some of the 2x4s to create an oblong flower bed near our back door, Another flower bed was outlined by 2x4s not into a true triangle. The two top boards were equal lengths, but instead of making the other equal length boad close the triagle I angled it out and then closed it with a short piece going at another angle lower then the bottom of the left side, then closed the figure with another longer board.
On the side that I straighetened out I added another parallel board to it to create a rectangular shape that frames a chase lounge. Those two boards extend to one side of the small octigon.
I added another small unbordered small scalloped flower bed to leave some drainage pipes uncovered with cement. It is just lrge enough to plant some flowers that hide the pipes.
I am self -taught to have earned my CAF number that certifies me to argue tax law in any coul tof he United States. I have taken the IRS to several courts over the years afor illegal abuse , and violations of various laws
I took them all them all the way to the Supreme Court without an attorney. I actually have grounds that I coudl bring then to CRIMINAL COURT, because they tamperind with my evidence, suppressed some of my evidence, and deleted some of my evidence.
They kept ruling againt me for Lack Jurisdiction to hear my case, but I learned in 2005 that our Louisiana courts never bothered to update their rules to include Congress' Taxpayert BIll of Rights III, Part IV which gave them jurisdiction.
So I took them to civil court.
Where that stands right now is that I finally found a Judge who knew the laws, and he ruled against the IRS who had filed a Motion for Summary Judgment. They were tryiing to get my case thrown out, but the Judge denied that motion, and told them the court did have Jurisdiction, that they had not proven their case, and told them that they were wrong to have charged us some flivorious penalties, because I did not meet any one of the four usual reasonas a person could be charged those penalties. So then, they tired to cite forty more reason, but he Judge told them he had reviewed each of the forty reasons they cited, but he told them that I did hot meet any one of the fiorty reasons, so tehy were wrong to have charged me those penalties, plus he told them that he was going to want to know why the Commissioner ABUSED his discretion.
I do hope that you enjoy your hobbies as much as I do mine.
Radio Control Helicopters, not for the faint of heart! (or those on a tight budget)
Computers & PC gaming
My Dachshund
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